Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → gmaanicus
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Node Colony | jam | 1909 | 3.18 | 3.04 | 3.64 | 2.77 | 3.02 | 2.66 | 3.29 |
Great work!
I'm amazed you achieved this in 48hrs. And if you're curious why you got three comments in the span of ten minutes, it's because your game hit number one in the smart rating section.
This is a really great metroidvania experience. Well done.
I like the models you made for this.
The mouse sensitivity was really high for me, which made it a bit difficult to move about.
The grappling mechanic is a bit clunky. It didn't work some of the time for me, but overall I enjoyed the mechanic!
Nice work!
This isn't that b--(cuts the middle tree)--*oh... that's freaking terrifying*
I literally recoiled from my monitor. Simple, but terrifying.
The storyline was really good too. I think I got the true ending. The text overall was *painstakingly* slow between lines, and sometimes (if the lines were long enough), it'd actually scroll past so fast that I would miss parts of the message. Unfortunately, the speed kinda took away from my enjoyment of the story.
Nonetheless, it is rather creative and simply terrifying. Again, your story is great, aside from the slow transcription.
Oh my gosh, I love it!
The concept is great, cute, and humorous.
The little gremlins that come after your phone are pretty great too. I think it's their death sounds that makes them what they are. *That sounds evil...*
Overall, it was *really* fun and well put together.
*A few criticisms/improvements that could be made, however:*
1) There is some friction when you jump and press against the side of a platform. This causes you to jump much lower, and it had me stuck for a good minute at one point.
2) It left me wishing for a throw function...
3) Sometimes the batteries would get put on top of another just slightly off, but they still worked fine, thankfully.
Other than that, art style was *beautiful*, music was simple and pleasant, main mechanic was pretty good, and I managed to make it to the end with only one failure.
**Yes, hello, this is Gman. Did you butt-dial me?**
Oh my, this game deserves the attention it is getting. The overall... deserted feeling this game gave off was a great feeling. It made it a bit suspenseful and really immersive.
Great gameplay, art, and pretty good sound design. One sound I didn't quite like was from the elevator rig on level 2. It is *just* a bit too loud and too harsh for a slow-moving object that is going to produce that sound for a decent amount of time.
Really cool atmosphere. Oh, another thing I wanted to sing your praises for: The punch when the text is introduced, and *how* it is introduced. The speech-like pattern was a very very nice touch.
I ended up getting soft-locked in the second level. This dang zombie gained magic powers! I decided to join them. I would rather be a wizard than a survivor.
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**A few criticisms, as always:**
1) The ladder was a bit finicky. Since this is a key aspect of movement in the game, I feel it could especially use some improvement. Sometimes I went up and down very quickly, other times I went slowly. One time I was launched into the ceiling and almost got stuck, another time I couldn't get off of it and had to *run* at the top to launch myself off of it.
2) The elevator rig sound as mentioned above.
3) Boxes are a bit hard to get around. I have to spam jump to pretty much glitch myself past them.
Overall: beautiful, fun, intriguing, and immersive.
I like the cinematic touch. The intro showing you throwing the match into the fire was a simple and to the point way of showing the player exactly what to do.
The intro cinematic was very jarring with the intense screen shake. It was a good idea, but it was just way too harsh.
The alarm clock wouldn't stop, even though I threw it into the fire. :cry: I think it, along with a couple other objects glitched through the floor when I threw them.
I like the fire extinguisher touch. I kinda threw it in there just to test, and I was pleased to find it was a proper easter egg of sorts. I then proceeded to freeze and die.
I would have liked some sort of indicator of how much time was left. It ended up feeling like it had been more than five minutes nearing the end, and I started wondering if it was just bugged.
Overall, a nicely made little game, especially for your first Ludum Dare. If this were combined with a story-line and or some other mechanics, I could see this being fleshed out into a *much* larger experience.
Oh man.
I like the idea, but it could definitely use some polish and instructions.
I figured out the first circuit once I realized what I was looking at, but the others made no sense. I didn't catch how the inputs could be combined to get the final result. Maybe I also just *didn't realize* I could combine them in certain ways, thinking back on it.
**FOR USERS EXPIERIENCING A PERMISSION-LOCKED FILE UPON EXPORTING THIS GAME FROM 7ZIP, USE EMCO'S UnLock IT TO DELETE IT**
I don't know if this was caused by the compiler for your game or 7Zip, but yeah, the file got permission locked on my computer and I couldn't delete it until I found UnLock IT. I highly doubt it's your game that caused that, so I wouldn't worry about it.
Right away, I like the fact that you made time for a short intro screen. I like the little menu button animation you made too, but it seems to lag just a tad when you move between the two buttons. Overall nicely done though!
I absolutely love the art style. You nailed the color scheme and theme of your art. I also love the little world you gave the game in your writing, but unfortunately I didn't get very far in it.
The SOUNDS, oh my word. The *sounds*... hitting enemies is *so juicy*. You nailed it!
I enjoyed myself, but there were a few things I had trouble with:
1) The wall jump is... weirdly complicated. You have to jump, immediately press to move in the direction you jumped, and repeat very quickly. I feel like it is WAY more natural to sort of cling jump while holding the movement key towards the wall, and bounce between walls while not holding any directional keys. If that were done, the player could go up the wall either way. I could achieve the latter for a short time, but eventually I stopped jumping far enough and fell again.
2) If you try to cling jump, you bounce too far and can't make progress upwards. Doing this would allow players to recover if they fell... down... definitely not like me. :grimacing:
3) I found myself clinging to the edges of platforms instead of jumping on top of them. It would feel a lot better if the player would magically be put on top of the platform when close enough to the corner. Although, I understand this is really just polish. Just thought I should mention it because it didn't "feel" great.
4) In one of the pools, I thought I was supposed to go down because it had no bottom. That led to a little platform at the bottom of the map. I didn't know where to go from there, so I thought I should cling to the edge and slide down. I did that and discovered death to the bottom of the map.
Overall, slightly rage-inducing, but I had a good time :smile:
**Wave 1**: Oh, right. X to attack with the rake. Gotcha. Come'ere you!
**Wave 2**: I've got all yall's name on this stick!
**Wave 3**: ***WHAT IN ALL THAT IS HOLY!?!?!***
I really like this! It's a simple dungeon-explorer-esque game with an interesting attack mechanic. The music was very enjoyable, and the graphics of the entities were very well polished!
**As always, A couple criticisms though:**
- I initially thought that enemies were going to be coming through those doors and that I would have to dispatch them before they killed me. After a good minute of them "not spawning", I figured out that it was more like a dungeon and that ***you*** *were the murderer*. Queue CLUE theme...
- The walk animation is slightly funky in that, if you start going the other direction, it seems to lag slightly before it changes to the correct direction. I appreciate the polish though!
- On my second play through, I got to the snake boss thing. I managed to defeat it before time ran out, but nothing happened. There were no doors, so I figured I won, but time drifted past and eventually ran out. It said I died. :cry:
All in all, very well done!
I was so close to finishing Extreme mode. Very simple and very fun.
I never ran into an instance where I couldn't move forward. That is impressive, especially in Extreme mode.
I love the cartwheeling animation when you hit a bomb.
Overall, well done. Only critiques are that the menu is a little clunky and also seems to lag when the game starts to load, and the color scheme is a bit bland.
A simple and somewhat entertaining mechanic. It's a shame there weren't any sound effects.
Sometimes jump wouldn't work for some reason, which made it a bit troublesome to complete some of the levels.
With some polish, sfx, and more levels, I could see this making a popular mobile game!
I didn't have any sound on my end, which was a bummer. I can appreciate the fact that there is a mute button though, so thanks for the effort.
The window size wouldn't scale up at all, and in general the game looks like it was designed for mobile.
The color scheme was a bit erratic, but everything fit together at least slightly well.
The Up reference in the background gave me a little chuckle. I don't know of any other houses that were flown via balloons. :smile:
I read in your bio that you didn't have very much time on top of the minimal time in Ludum Dare already. Well done completing your project before time ran out!
@sode You hit "more info" and can then select "run anyway". Also, there is a zip download where it is already compiled.
And for you, dev:
**First, the UI:**
**1)** The difficulty menu is gorgeous. It's the same color scheme as the rest, but it's just put together so well.
**2)** The attack menu is kinda rough looking. The left panel looks great, but the rest has sharp edges. What you need is some shaded edges on the hearts and attack "cards" like you did in the left panel.
**Next, the gameplay:**
**1)** There isn't really any feedback, and, because of that, everything is a bit rigid. Some click, transition, and attack/defense sounds would do a lot for that. Adding small "jiggles" or sprite changes when things are clicked on/changed would also add a lot of feedback.
**2)** I think your main offense is the lack of feedback in the attack/defense category. The problem is, we don't know what we are doing right or wrong. You should translate that to the player, such as through a menu that shows what beat what in the previous skirmish.
Other than that, I can appreciate a good strategy game. I sorta started figuring things out, but I still have a long way to go.
I like the concept, the way you set up the battle system, and the fact that it is based on fencing techniques. Teach us some fencing!
I like the concept. It's strange, but plays pretty well.
A couple criticisms:
1) There wasn't any feedback for when I changed eyeball shooty-bang-bang-thingies, besides the highlighted menu icon at the bottom. There should be some visual representation on the eyes themselves (like a little jiggle when I switch or something) to tell me which one I'm using so that I don't have to glance at the menu and lose focus on the incoming meteors
2) The eyeballs spinning around while talking is a nice touch, but it interferes with my aim. The only time it was a problem was when miss red decided *SHE WANTED SOME NUGGETS*. I think the eyes should have reverted to their positions when the character scripts started.
3) My shots were getting misdirected by the other eyes' shots. I don't know if they were colliding or if there is some sort of magnetism, but it was certainly a slight annoyance.
Other than that, there were a few grammar issues, but nothing terrible. Overall, well done!
@arthurds LOL! Nicely done then!
@almighty-games Thanks for playing! It seemed like there were some concepts that I wasn't able to communicate with a lack of a tutorial. Some seemed to pick it up right away, probably because they were familiar with the mechanics and games somewhat like it, but I understand that others would be extremely confused, especially those that do not play many RTS games. There are some concepts in that genre that are really difficult to communicate without a proper tutorial.
Again, I appreciate you trying, and thanks for leaving a review. :smile:
@wolfier Hey, thanks for playing! The Marauder is a bit stronger in both health and damage, but also takes longer to fire. If they never did, that's probably because of the semi-buggy attack system. Enemies will sometimes spam attacks, therefore killing your units before they had a chance to fire. That shouldn't happen, and I will continue to look for the root cause.
Definitely on my TODO list. Thanks for the feedback!
@perpetuummobile @robotsandmuffins
Thanks! I definitely will be continuing this. I had planned on so much more that just didn't make it in time! :cry:
Apologies for the enemy movement bug (which is why you didn't see them). Things are a bit complicated on my end, and I'm trying to find the root cause of the issue.
@erebus @rhoka Thanks so much for playing! Taking a look, Creeper World seems to be somewhat similar to what I would like to turn this game into.
Thanks for pointing out the bug! I'll put out a patch very shortly here with a few other fixes as well.
@artur-hawkwing @no-grapes-games Thanks so much for checking it out!
Yeah! In hindsight, going for an RTS game is a *lot* more complicated than I thought. I'm glad you guys enjoyed what I was able to build before time ran out!
I'll definitely be fleshing this out a lot more, and I may even make a Steam release if I can give it enough content.
@lamossus Thanks for playing! Yeah, the "map" is randomly generated. Sometimes those nodes can be rather sparse.
Thanks for the suggestion. That'll definitely make it in the post-LD version. I plan on working on this over the next while, or however long it takes to get it where I want it. I'd hope to make it good enough for a proper release by the end of May. We'll see!
Thanks @teto @ursagames!
I really like the art style, music, and concept in general. The SFX for pickups, energy and food delivery, drone chirps, and etc were equally well put together.
The small touches like the how the drone's lights turn on when you are in a dark area and the LEDs that show if a panel is getting power were nice additions that didn't go unnoticed.
It took a while to charge the ship up for me. However, I'm seeing that some people had different experiences because of their FPS? I'll leave that up for debate then :)
I could see this going places if it were expanded upon, but right now it just gets a little repetitive after the first 10 trips. Overall, a charming little experience. Well done!
Hah, nicely done. I don't know if this was just my imagination, but were the men slower?
I was INCHES away from delivering the last stupid human to our great lord Cthulu, but the great lord grew impatient and game-ended me.
I like your art design, and the game mechanic is nice and simple. It would have been nice to hear the stupid people scream, but I understand voice acting is not many people's forte or priority because of the short timeline. Well done!
Also, I noticed those shaders. :smirk: Beautiful.
Well, I'm not going to spoil anything. The ending was simply... unexpected.
I couldn't pet the poor doggy day 5 and after. I would just reverse direction and get stuck for what seemed to be the length of what should have been the animation.
I petted her every night, but she never got any happier :(
That's some beautiful pixel art. Shame it didn't have any sound. Overall, nice work for your first project in Unity!